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Thursday, September 29, 2016

Indian Art Gallery Wall: Pattachitra Painting

My Pattachitra painting is ready and I could not believe my eyes when I saw the completed painting. Let me first tell you all that this painting was the most difficult one among all that I painted for my Indian Art Gallery Wall.

Pattachitra is a famous art form of Odisha, India. Traditional Pattachitra is made on Patta or cloth/canvas and chitra means painting hence the painting got its name Pattachitra.

The theme of this painting style is inspired by Hindu mythology like many other Indian art forms. I chose Dashavatar (ten incarnations of god) for my Pattachitra painting theme. Earlier I had attended a Pattachitra painting workshop and I had made a small Pattachitra bookmark on dried banana leaf. You can check out the tutorial and my first Pattachitra painting here.
I stuck the same bookmark in the center of the drawing sheet to start the painting and then drew Dashavatar around it.

Only main figures and bigger motifs are drawn using pencil/pen and rest of the detailing like filling gaps and border with patterns are done using a paint brush. Figures in Pattachitra are always well defined and motifs are quite detailed.

Main colors used in Pattachitra paintings are yellow, red, blue, green, white and black. While filling colors, choose complementary color scheme as you go from the center towards the edge of the painting and choose analogous color scheme or tints & shades of the color to fill the patterns in a particular design. This practice makes the painting look vibrant and detailed.

Intricate patterns are filled in every figure and motif. Fine details like features of gods, goddesses, animals and birds and detailing on clothes are done meticulously using a fine paint brush. It took me three days to complete this painting and I was in awe once it was done.

Dashavatar you see in the above painting are Matsya, Kurma, Varaha, Narasimha, Vamana, Parashurama, Ram, Balram, Krishna (sometimes replaced by Buddha) and Kalki from the top left to bottom right respectively.

My family and lots of my friends and readers are thoroughly enjoying this Indian Art Gallery wall series. Sometimes I receive emails and messages from my lovely readers saying how they are inspired to create one such wall in their homes too and how they keep checking my Instagram feed and blog just to check whether I have posted my next painting in this series. And some of them are so sweet that they even sent me some beautiful Indian folk paintings to complete the gallery wall. I will be posting about it in my next blog and that's not all, I have a big news to share with you all too. So...........